The 50 Largest Stashes of Cash Companies Keep Overseas

Although it's still short on details, President Trump's tax reform plan would spur companies that have been stockpiling cash overseas—to avoid paying taxes—to bring the money home. The tax outline he released in April doesn’t specify a rate, but during the campaign Trump proposed a one-time tax of 10 percent on offshore earnings instead of the standard 35 percent corporate rate that would otherwise apply. (House Republicans are even more generous, proposing an 8.75 percent tax on foreign earnings held as cash and a 3.5 percent rate for all other foreign earnings.)

Both plans would impose their lower tax rates as “deemed repatriation” rates. That means companies would owe the tax regardless of whether they actually repatriate the income.

The repatriated money could be used on share buybacks, dividends, acquisitions and capital spending. Tech companies would be the biggest beneficiaries: Apple, Microsoft and Cisco Systems alone have a total of $427 billion stored overseas.

The 50 top overseas cash holders in the S&P 500 have parked $925 billion of their cash and marketable securities outside the U.S., an increase of $118 billion since their filings one year ago.